Sollemnia
by frillysailorsuit
Summary: Light was better off without the Death Note.
1. Achromic

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

Information: This is just a writing exercise. It's not supposed to be shock horror. The goal is to keep each chapter a page long, but keep the suspense and story going. Onward!

**Sollemnia**

_**1. Achromic**_

It's autumn and there is indigo staining the sky and Light feels like screaming.

"You are the best student in the class." Nakamura-sensei says it with smiles, but his eyes want to kill Light so hard, kill him with the steel in his eyes. "You must understand that looking out the window will not do, for a student like you. You are distracting yourself."

Light can smell the sadism in the man's eyes as he pulls the shade down and the sky is ripped from his vision, and the world gets just a little darker.

Light could crack open Nakamura-sensei's head like a fresh egg and let the rich yellow yolk slobber down his face and fill the classroom as Alice filled Wonderland with tears. But he does not. There are humans looking at him. They want something from him. They all love him, but secretly, they want to see the yolk run from his egg-cracked head, too. He doesn't deserve any of this, they think angrily. That's okay, anyway, because Light doesn't want any of this either.

This is all he can do now. This is all he has. So he will stand on his feet, straight and proud, and the scream will float out of him in the form of a softly spoken "'Can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open...'" He will close the book and everyone will smile their praise but it's all pretend, really.

Light comes home to a house with Mother and Sister bolted like nails to their assigned rooms (Mother in the living room, Sayu in her bedroom). Mother will ask about test results to see if her little robot boy is functioning correctly, and her magazine will call her back to a world of gloss and glamour. Interaction done. Sister will come out of her room, ask for her homework to be reviewed. Light will correct it without even looking at it. Interaction done.

Light calculates how many times in the last twelve years he has woken up, gone to school, stared out the window, and gone home. He shakes his head. What a waste of time. What a waste of life. Shameful.

The boy does not watch television, does not log online. He slides into his straight, stiff bed. It's almost like a coffin. It's almost pleasant. The ceiling is white and stretches over him. Many images swirl over it in the dark. Someone winks at him from the corner of the room. A man walks into his closet. His closet is the entrance to hell.

Light thinks about all of his friends in the forest and feels heartened. Existing is not a lost cause, after all. The world would be safe soon.

"Worthless," the man mumbles through his door. "Worthless."

The nightmares Light has are not so bad when he considers the ramifications of being awake.

* * *

lol what am I writing.


	2. Ashen

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

**Sollemnia**

_**2. Ashen**_

He knows it is a dream when he feels warmth inside of him that does not come from his body. The stone chapel is small and agonizingly cold, but the pious still attend this day. Light lifts his head and shows it to the crowd of unblinking eyes, his head that swings from his stiffening fingers.

"This is my head," he says, his fingers pulling irritatingly at his hair. "It was taken from me but an hour ago. Watch as the color leaves my skin. This is the nature of the world."

His headless body drops to the dirt ground and his kneecaps knock into earth. His head still speaks:

"I have surrendered my body to save my body." But he has failed and has been felled.

The warmth stays in Light, even after dying. This is the first time in Light's life that he feels. This is a happy, happy dream.

Light knows it is not a dream when he arrives Saturday at the little, obscured shack in the center of the woods and bludgeons a squirrel with a hammer, red spitting up at his cheeks. It is the first squirrel he has killed in three weeks. Light will not be sated with just one.

He takes three live samples. One he vivisects. The next he burns. The third he crushes in a vice. His stomach juices thrash and screech at him. His brain hums quietly. It is this balance of forces and clank, clank, clank of machinery that leaves Light in peace. He doesn't get why his acids are getting so worked up for, anyway. It isn't as if he is doing this for fun. This is all work—honest, noble work done for the greater good.

Covered in slime, gunk, blood, pus, and a workman's apron, he steps backs an hour later to appreciate the downy wall decor. Oh, get the nails, the nails. The gutted one will make a nice medal. Tack him up next to Tama number two, underneath Tama number twenty. The hovel is a true tour de force in the making.

Sometimes Light will see some _filthy_, _foul-mouthed_ teenage boys tromping through the undergrowth, chattering like the squirrels he just... The hammer is tight and hot in his hand. His breathing escalates, and Light feels as if he is at the top of Mt. Fuji, at the top of the world, at the top of the universe. There is no air at the top. He could start now. He could eviscerate the world now. It would be less work later on.

Ryota, Katsuo, and Hitoshi pass through unharmed.

Light throws the hammer onto the table, so hard that the hooked end lodges itself into the wood. Clasping the sides of his head, the boy rocks on his heels. He can't _give away his position_, not after he worked so hard to hide the shack under all that foliage and tree cover. One should never waste their energies! It must be put to good use—just like his mind or just like the tiny bodies lining the walls like coat racks.

Light picks out his usual souvenirs and cleans up. He leaves at a quarter to six with a jar under his arm, full of beady, jelly eyes spinning like marbles to stare star-ward.


	3. Blanched

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

**Sollemnia**

_**3. Blanched**_

It is three in the morning and Light really wants to go to the café.

He needs to go. It is a bawling desire fracturing his rib cage. It is around the time every week when he makes his pilgrimage to that special place where they dispense brown, bitter liquids in white cups. Light does not know the name of the place but he likes to go there. He just goes there to watch.

The problem is that Father, the man who helped make him and put him on this planet, is sleeping on the couch in the living room. The living room is right next to the door. His father, being the strung-out cop he is, will jump at the lightest creak of wood, the squeak of a door hinge. Why, tonight of all nights, did he have to come home?

Light peers at the dark form from the stairs and scampers to his room. He can not stay home. No, no. That is unacceptable. He needs to leave. He needs to go. Missing tonight would make the week ahead long, arduous, and agonizing. He would need more than squirrels to survive.

So he throws open his window, leaps to the adjacent oak, and descends. The minute he touches ground, he is free. The moon eyes him. It is swollen and bright, like a frozen sun, and Light runs joyously under it. His skin glows bronze, his eyes blaze candle-like. His mouth is a smokestack, pushing out ice mists. He runs and he runs and his feet, sooner or later, _click-click-click_ into a late-night café. There are a group of teenagers, Light's age, trying to look cool in their corner. Light slides into a booth, the one by the window this time. He doesn't have to turn his head to know HE is there.

HE is a ghost. And HE makes Light's skin recoil and shed and crawl away into a dark corner. Terribly. Fascinating.

Light orders his drink (American coffee, black, no no no sugar, thank you) and waits for it. He knows HE is staring when his neck suffers from persistent prickling. Light will only begin to observe HIM when HE is facedown in his ganache. Ganache, at three in the morning! The corner of the genius's mouth wiggles and his throat wants to boil over with giggles. Ganache.

The teenagers clomp out obnoxiously, cursing and spitting. They leave them in limbo, sipping their poisons and eating their blood cakes and wiping their mouths with shrouds. Light likens the black waters in his cup to HIS eyes. If he were to tip HIS face to his mouth, he could probably drink HIS pupils.

This coffee shop man could save the world. HE saved Light before, after all. In a way, that was very much an effort in preserving the Earth.

Light kind of hated him for it.


	4. CaCO3

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

Thanks for everyone who faved and alerted~

**Sollemnia**

_**4. CaCO3**_

It squiggles across the chalkboard, mewls as its body is shaved away. The little boys and girls cover their ears even though Light likes to amuse himself with the thought that they were already deaf.

(Sometimes Ryota looks over at him and smiles like the idiot he is. Light did not know blood could in fact boil. He wants to be as small as a mouse.)

He pretends to laugh at a lame joke, tries not to make his voice stand out against the roar of hyenas. He brawls against the desire to lay his head on the desk and be done. He demonstrates the correct answer to problems as easy as two plus two. When they smack their hands together in make believe adoration, Light wants to bow, hat in hand. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, but Light's next trick would put the heels over their heads. He would make Ryota's dog vanish.

He has the equipment in his shack: muzzle, tranquilizer dart, sack, rope. His mind scrolls back to an old USSR video, canine head and sad eyes. No. He would not try that. Light does not do torture.

On Saturday when Ryota is out terrorizing, Light will be a silhouette dancing on his picket fence, tempting his Kuro-kun with meats and treats, pouncing like a wild cat and bagging his prize. It was all for the greater good, the greatest good. [And the greatest good was Light Yagami's peace (pieces?) of mind.]

A part of him yearns to pick up his things, fit his book bag strap over his head and walk, simply walk out of class. No one would protest the smartest student in all of Japan leaving class early. "Ah, but he was polite enough to attend for so long when he did not have to!" they would explain away.

(Light tries not to, but he takes much pleasure in pondering how fast his face would morph into a Halloween mask if he saw Kuro-kun's head on a pike.)

The sun is rubbed out and the showers tumble down. Light is a boy who keeps his desires to himself, so he keeps his back straight, his head upright, his arms at his sides, trotting eagerly out of the building alongside the rest of the student body. He ignores the powerful compulsion to throw out his arms, let his body become loose, howl epithets at the gods.

He is going to snap, like a rubber band at its limit. He cannot linger in ephemeral sanity until the weekend. He will go now before he forces his pens into Ryota's stomach. He hopscotches amidst the downpour. When this is over, when he has finished his training, his soul will be free. He will live in grayscale no longer. He could do a back flip.

A phantom follows him into the grove.

* * *

OH MAN SOMETHING'S HAPPENING I THINK.


	5. Candidus

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Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

Thanks to everyone who faved and alerted~ This chapter's title brought to you by****** nardaviel**

**Sollemnia**

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**5. Candidus**

Light's hands fondle his instruments. Tools stolen from various locales, like the scalpel from the hospital, the box cutter from that workman, the Exact-o knife from the art room. No, not stolen, but given. People love giving Light the Genius fabulous gifts. Light accepts. They are manipulated, worked into a good disposition (a gift-giving disposition) eased into with many smiles and sweetened words.

They are cool, smooth handles and shiny blades. Light does not like it, this preying on the weak but it is more than necessary. They are requirements for a more peaceful planet (his own planet).

"Light Yagami."

The boy starts. His finger twitches. He bleeds. The voice is soft yet serrated on the ends, like he has tasted every knife in this wooden box, and it comes from the hunched man that has appeared behind the trapped pupil.

The man's head revolves, taking in the wall crucifixions, the muzzles, the knives. He sucks his thumb, eyes combing over the red dots on the floor.

Light is elsewhere. The man from the coffee shop, that one that is colored like the half and half cookies he always orders, has made a discovery today (a very bad one). Christopher Columbus has bumbled into the kraken's den. His tentacle happens upon a pen knife. Is he ready yet? Has he trained enough?

"Excuse me." He pulls up his mouth. "Is this your shack?"

"No," the man says, "but I have a very shrewd idea as to who it belongs to."

Light dons worry. "Do you? We better leave before he comes back." He throws in nervous glances and bitten lips. The man looks mildly impressed.

"If all of his weapons are stowed away here, I doubt we have much to worry about." Light's heart matches the banging on the rooftop as HE steps forward. _His stage is a murder shed his congratulatory flowers are a deluge of guts his call for an encore is a scream. _He takes his hand (Cuffs? Stun gun?) out of his pocket and offers his tapered fingers to Light.

"I kept seeing you in the shop and so recognized you in the community newsletter: 'The best student in Japan,' it claims. If that is true, then I know you know from looking at all of this that there is a person with a grudge against rodents on the loose."

Light dips his head in agreement. "A blossoming serial killer."

"Be on the lookout. I would not want anything to happen to Japan's academic star."

"Me?" Light laughs and is dying to coat it in mockery. "I am untouchable."

The other cocks his own head. Light is suddenly arrested by the image of the other's gliding hand, growing larger and larger as it brushes his face…

"A petal," he says, "in your bangs." He flicks it away. He turns, waving his hand.

__

I can touch you whenever I wish.

"Another day, Yagami-kun."

He disintegrates in celestial waters. Light upends the table.

* * *

Such a temper. Tsk.


	6. Diamond

Don't own the ERASER RAAAAAAAIN I mean, "Death Note." This chapter is a tiiiiiny bit longer.

6. Diamond

Kill the dog or the hound? Light circumnavigates his room, swaddled in black. He has been put in check. Kuro-kun may have to wait another night with the hound sniffing.

The man has many names. Many a curious and flirty waitress have asked for it, resulting in anything from Kenichi to Ryuuzaki to Ryuuga. It makes background checks problematic. Light has typed every last one into his computer.

This is an issue, a real issue. Light has not nearly completed his training. To go from squirrels to humans is too much of a jump. The transition has to flow smoothly, beginning with insects, then rodents, then puppy dogs.

No, the man. He cannot do this because of that man. He was clever enough to follow Light, confront him, send his message without so much as the flaring of nostrils. Is there a possibility that KenichiRyuzakiRyuuga will take this as a warning, a sign, a "so what?" Reckless, daring!

He slides his stomach over the balcony railing and sees _that stupid waitress swaying her hips over to him, Ryuzaki Ryuuga Whatever, and he comments drily on the pendulum properties of her body. She giggles at the not-compliment. "My aren't you bold? Moving in on me so quickly!"_

"_He who moves first always wins." He looks up at that moment. Light is hopeful that he knows intuitively that the youth is watching him by way of the reflection in the napkin dispenser. _

Coffee man is smart. Light will give him that...except he did not do anything about Light Yagami, the Big Bad Wolf. If he believes in the credo of moving first and winning, he would have had Light put in chains on the double, especially one so concerned with the safety of squirrels. He did not say that to impress the waitress, no, because he could see how dumb she was and that would not raise her eyebrows or her skirts. No, they are similar creatures, he and Ryuugazaki. They only say what is necessary. He had been tempting him into revealing himself.

Light has been cautious all week long, checking around corners for heads shaped like great, black thorn bushes. Discreetly, of course.

_He has no proof. He has NO proof._

If he stops now, coincidentally right after their encounter, he will have reason to put Light under his magnifying glass. He snorts. He is getting anxious over some hobo pretending to be some specially skilled P.I.

_P.I. P-I-G. Sloppy and dirty like one. Oink._

He grabs his tools. He is he who moves first.

**

* * *

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Elsewhere, L balances a gumdrop on his tongue. Light Yagami's records have shown him to be perfect in every way. This is why he deduces Light Yagami has secrets to hide: the kind that would be classed as "deep" and "dark."

He gulps it down and laps at his sugar-with-coffee, a kitten indulging in its saucer of milk. He snatches a cord of licorice. He knows it is him. He knows. It is not often things, ideas, notions escape L's radar. But Light is more than a blip on the screen. How many people are able to witness the birth of a serial killer firsthand?

The licorice sticks like muck to his molars. The lives of innocent animals would be ceded, yes, but the greatest experiments in history have necessitated putting the well-being of humans before "lesser" creatures (He recalls the valley of pigs parading just before Fat Man's ancestor lunges). Kill a few rats and chipmunks, cure cancer. Slay a couple of mice, cure AIDS. Oversee the creation of a monster, study the progression up close, prevent the future decimation of his fellow man. L is a scientist just as much as he is a detective. Light Yagami is about to be flattened between slides and placed under his microscope.

(In the millions of cracks and folds of his brain, Light's face jiggles the handle of his cranial filing cabinet. Did he dream up that upturned nose, those false lips, those cat eyes on a boring plane ride to Paris once upon a time?)

He is a boy with a secure, loving family life. He is the boy every teenager wants to be. He builds his roads with the hearts he has captured, boys and girls throw themselves at his feet to be tread upon, he ascends the golden staircase without a trace of remorse, and no one blames him for it ("Yagami-kun? He would never do that! He _earned_ it!")

L tugs at the candy with his teeth. He can see it in motion, the little things that can make someone

**SNAP!**

Light comes to a stop on the picket fence, shelves himself as he watches the ground below. Kuro-kun's eyes are bright and curious but there is a gentle earthquake in his throat. His nose points at the drugged steak, enclosed in plastic wrap. He has been foiled by an unfortunately-placed twig. Crouching, Light listens past the growls for activity inside the house. One minute. Two minute. Five minute.

Was that a face in the windo-?

Kuro-kun, unable to stand the aroma of fine meat any longer, hops up on his hind legs and heaves all the weight of his upper body on the fence. The slats protest, overshadowing the gasp that almost escapes Light. He has misjudged the strength of an ancient barrier. He falls down, onto eager tooth and tongue.

* * *

SCHOOL ARGH. I dunno, this chapter is missing something, but I'm tired of it sitting here. Matsuda soon!


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